Suicide

My goal is to destigmatize the topics of mental health and addiction and to create awareness so that people suffering can ask for help, know they are not alone, and realize there is always hope.

My music persona “Goldyngambit” has become my brand to be an advocate of mental health awareness. And had I not battled this illness, I wouldn’t have been able to create my art.

As a kid, mental health was a confusing mystery that no adult that I knew addressed with me. Coping skills, stress, anxiety, depression, and substance use all seemed like things to figure out on my own or with kids my own age who knew little more than I did.

Getting sick was both sudden and gradual. The timeline of my mental health disorder, or rather disorders because I endured several, was so erratic, waxing and waning, often corresponding to a momentous event in my life or the birth of one of my children or the death of a loved one.

Now in my 70's, I can look back over my life and see some of the positive things that resulted from having experienced depression.

The dull ache of depression had lodged in my belly for several years like a sponge, soaking away the dopamine and serotonin from the rest of my body, buoyed only by, “it runs in the family,” from a generation that thought therapy, and especially medication, meant institutionalization and perhaps an eventual lobotomy.